Tiny supercomputers could be made from the skeleton inside your cells

Building computers out of the skeleton that holds our cells together instead of silicon could make them smaller and more energy efficient than the power-hungry machines we rely on today.

To encourage the development of such computers, Andrew Adamatsky at the University of the West of England in Bristol, UK, and his colleagues have produced a theoretical foundation for computing with cytoskeletons — the protein-based scaffolds that give cells their shape and help them move.

Cytoskeletons are made up of several different structures, including 25 nanometre-wide tubules …